Data that has been traditionally collected by way of paper forms is now often collected electronically. For example, data can be collected from on-line forms through the World Wide Web or data can be extracted from existing databases. Applicants for most colleges now have the option of either completing an on-line application form or completing a paper form. In a mixed environment of electronic and paper forms, or even in an all electronic environment, many of the steps for processing forms are still oriented toward paper forms. While electronic forms can be printed, a typical electronic form printout does not resemble the paper form from which it was derived.
It is sometimes necessary to take data that was entered on an electronic form or that originated in an electronic database, and produce from the electronic data a printout that is similar or identical in appearance to an existing paper form. College admission committees, for example, still meet to read and discuss the paper applications. In order to avoid changing their application review procedures, or to minimize bias in the evaluation process between paper and electronic forms, the institutions often require that the electronic forms be printed in a format that appears very similar to their pre-existing paper forms.
Even in cases in which a person completes a paper form, the receiving institution may want to store the form electronically. The institution could scan the completed form and save an image of the paper form. Electronic images of the completed paper form, however, are less useful than an electronic form because the image of answers entered by the user is not as readily available for data processing as the text or user selections entered on an electronic form. It would be preferable to convert the information entered on the paper form to non-image data, for example, by having someone keyboard the answers on the form or by using optical character recognition to determine the characters entered on the form by the user. The data would then be available for processing, and when the institution wants to view the form, it can be reproduced from the stored data rather than by recalling the image. This process, in effect, converts the paper form into an electronic form.
There are several advantages to storing the information entered on the form as accessible data in an electronic form, rather than storing an image of the paper form. Electronic forms are more easily accessed through a variety of devices, such as handheld or other devices on which it is impractical to display an image of a paper form. Electronic forms can be presented in a variety of ways in order to be accessible to be people with disabilities Also, electronic forms can adaptively display content based on data entered onto the form. For example, the electronic form can be displayed without irrelevant questions, such as questions about immigration status for a non-immigrant.
In the past, the process of creating paper forms printouts from electronic forms was time consuming and required a skilled programmer. The programmer created a template for each form to describe how the data from the electronic form was to be positioned on an image of the paper form, and then a program used the template to print paper forms from instances of the electronic form.
There are several factors that complicate the process of creating paper forms from electronic forms. Because electronic forms are more readily customized than paper forms, sometimes multiple versions of an electronic form are derived from a single paper form. When converting the electronic data back to a paper form, it may be necessary, therefore, to create one paper form that corresponds to several different electronic forms. For example, different graduate schools within a university may each have their own customized electronic admissions form, yet the college may require all the electronic graduate admissions forms to be printed as a single paper form for comparison.
Different electronic forms can use different variable names to represent the same information. When converting to a paper form, the different variable names must be reconciled to print the information in the correct place on the paper form. Another complication is that electronic forms can alter the questions presented based on responses to previous questions, so the same electronic form completed by two different people may have a different number of data fields. Thus, there is not a simple one-to-one mapping of answers in the electronic form to spaces on the paper form. The variation within the same electronic form and between different electronic forms that map to the same paper form, make the mapping process complex.
Electronic forms are composed mostly of labels, variables (that is, place holders for the data collected in individual form questions) and data sets (that is, data that populate questions with a finite set of selectable answers, such as a list of states). The number of questions on a form, in most cases, corresponds to the number of variables that exist in the corresponding electronic form.
To create a paper form from electronic data, a programmer typically uses an electronic representation of the paper form image in, for example, portable document format (“PDF”). Electronic forms are typically written in extensible mark-up language (“XML”). The programmer creates data fields on the PDF image for inserting variables. These data fields serve as a template, describing a region on the PDF image and an associated variable. A program then applies the template to instances of the electronic XML form to put the data into the data fields on the PDF file. Creating the template has been a slow and tedious process, requiring many hours of skilled programming.
The term “paper form” used herein can refer not only to a form that is printed on a piece of paper and that is completed by a form user using a pen, pencil, or typewriter, but also to an electronic image of such a form, as opposed to a print out of a form that is completed on line and that does not resemble such a form.